Belligerence is not the answer on Iran

By Jacob Weisberg

Financial Times

Published: February 1 2007

In his book The Persian Puzzle, Kenneth
Pollack aptly frames the issue of Iran as a “race between two clocks”. One clock
counts down the time until Iran enriches enough uranium to build a nuclear
weapon. The other ticks off the hours that a corrupt clerical regime has left.
The problem is that the alarm on the first clock seems set to go off before the
alarm on the second.

A sensible way to think about policy towards Iran might be to consider ways
to reverse that precedence – to stretch out the nuclear timetable, while
encouraging the demise of an Iranian government bent on proliferation. Estimates
of the time needed for Iran to assemble a bomb range from three to eight years.
(The Iraqi example counsels scepticism about such forecasts.) Predicting the
durability of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad’s rule, or the Islamic republic as a whole,
is even trickier. Depending on which demise one is talking about, it could be a
matter of months or of generations. But the outer edge of the proliferation
schedule suggests that there may be a considerable window for political change
to occur first.

At the moment, the Bush administration’s policy seems taken straight from the
self-sabotage strategy book – quite a thick volume when it comes to America’s
relations with Iran. Were our goal to persuade the Iranian regime to hasten its
nuclear race while binding it more closely to a weary and discontented populace,
it is hard to see how we could be more effective.

Especially in the past month, American policy has been more about rattling
sabres than carrots and sticks. In this week’s instalment, Vice-President Dick
Cheney, who actually may be twisted enough to want a military confrontation,
underscored that the aircraft carrier Stennis was being sent to the Persian Gulf
as a “strong signal” of warning.

Such belligerence seems unlikely to produce the result we desire, for a
variety of reasons. For one, our bluster is empty. The US lacks plausible
military options for nuclear pre-emption, especially now that we are bogged down
in Iraq. It is also proving difficult to get the rest of the world to go along
with the kind of comprehensive sanctions that would truly bite. Meanwhile, US
hostility is supplying Mr Ahmadi-Nejad with an external demon for his propaganda
and helping him to cover over his domestic failures. This American push for
futile sanctions follows the pattern extending from Cuba to Burma to
pre-invasion Iraq, where economic isolation and external threat have fuelled not
regime change but regime stabilisation.

What might an alternative strategy – one framed explicitly in terms of
reversing the speed of the two clocks – look like? To begin with, it would
emphasise America’s preference for diplomacy over brinkmanship. Condoleezza
Rice, secretary of state, would embrace the “time out” deal recently proposed by
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Under this proposal, Iran would suspend uranium enrichment while the US would
hold off pushing punitive measures. The ultimate settlement would involve Iran’s
abiding by the non-proliferation treaty and the dropping by the US not only of
international sanctions but of bilateral ones as well.

Iran’s internal political dynamics are opaque, to say the least, but
conciliation with the Great Satan would probably make it harder for Mr
Ahmadi-Nejad to divert attention from the costs his people are paying for his
mischief-making and his inability to reform the economy. But just as important
as the effort in diplomacy would be a moral challenge focused on support for
human rights, civil society and solidarity with the Iranian people, who are
being bled for the sake of their president’s hegemonic designs.

We know well the effect this kind of stance can have. Jeane Kirkpatrick, who
died in December, first became famous for an article she wrote arguing that
former president Jimmy Carter’s emphasis on human rights helped bring down the
shah and usher in the Iranian revolution. As ambassador to the United Nations
during Ronald Reagan’s first term, Ms Kirkpatrick herself eloquently challenged
the legitimacy of totalitarian regimes. After the fall of communism, opposition
leaders throughout eastern Europe and the Soviet Union testified that western
encouragement – including from the BBC and Radio Free Europe – had advanced
their struggle for liberation.

Mr Bush pays lip service to such sentiments, often hailing the greatness of
the Iranian people and endorsing their assumed desire for freedom. But, for the
past three years, the president has failed to mention in public the name of
Shirin Ebadi, Iran’s Nobel Prize-winning human rights lawyer. Ms Ebadi is the
closest thing Iran has to an Andrei Sakharov, but she is also a critic of the US
administration. Because of sanctions, it took a lawsuit against the Treasury
department for her to publish her memoirs in the US. No one in the White House
raised a finger on her behalf.

But perhaps it would be worse if they had. Mr Bush, who has managed to make
democracy a dirty word in many parts of the world, may at this point retain only
the ability to taint by association liberal heroes who fight tyranny.

The only encouraging news is that Mr Bush’s own clock, with just 103 weeks
left to run, is ticking even faster than the other two.